ComEd training workers in new smart grid

As the utility transitions to a smart grid, workers are forced to disrupt their culture to keep up with technology

November 17, 2013|By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune reporter

Tom Panek, 22, of Chicago, from left, Jack Nicholson, 23, and Josh Eichelberger, 33, both of Antioch, take part in a ComEd class for linemen, splicers and operators at the utility's Rockford training center. (Zbigniew Bzdak, Chicago Tribune)

ROCKFORD — — The first day he was told he'd have to tote a laptop computer while climbing poles and repairing outages, Bill Schauff, 54, recalled thinking: "I'm an old farm boy. What am I supposed to do with this thing?"

Lately, utility workers who have spent years teetering on poles in storms or have been lowered underground to splice cable are being herded into classrooms at Commonwealth Edison's new training center in Rockford. They are learning skills essential to operating the emerging smart grid, which utilizes computer and Internet technology to more quickly pinpoint and repair electrical lines.

For some workers, that means learning to use a smartphone or a tablet computer, as well as how to install computerized devices on utility poles that automatically alerts the utility of power disruptions. It's a lot of change for workers — and for what customers can expect.

ComEd used to depend on customers calling in when the lights went out. In response, the utility would send a lineman in a truck, with a paper map and flashlight, to try to locate the broken circuit. "In the old days, we'd hop out of the truck, fix it," Schauff said.

About 80 percent of outages along ComEd's 40,000 miles of overhead electric lines were caused by an encounter as brief as a millisecond with tree branches or squirrels. Yet that brief disruption might have caused 2,000 homes to lose power.

Now, smart switches — lunchbox-size computerized devices — that have been attached to utility poles on about half of ComEd's grid automatically pinpoint where the outage has occurred and reroute power to most customers within seconds.

The workers acknowledge that the technology helps them be more efficient and allows them to focus on bigger problems. It also has dramatically changed the way many of them do their jobs.

Not only are workers monitored via global positioning, but they must check in constantly on laptops or smartphones. They must report what they're seeing above or below ground to ComEd's new social media team, which, in turn, is responsible for telling customers through text messages and Facebook and Twitter posts how long outages are expected to last, and possible causes.

Using smartphones and laptops doesn't come easily to some of the company's most experienced linemen and underground cable splicers. And predicting more precisely how long an outage is expected to last is not something they're used to.

"It turns out it's not getting lights on a few minutes faster that matters most to people. People are happier just knowing — is it going to be out for six hours or six minutes? So that they can plan their days," said Mike Martin, 48, ComEd's methods and training manager.

Terence Donnelly, ComEd's executive vice president and chief operating officer, said the utility's electric lines haven't changed all that much over time. "It's a lot of hard iron, poles, and wires and cables," he said.

"What has changed is a lot of technology associated with the equipment that runs the grid. Overhead linemen are being trained to operate digital controls for smart switches, not only installing them but also programming them, reading digital readouts in the middle of the night when they're troubleshooting a particular outage — and that's new for folks."

The result is that about eight hours of training has been added per worker, on average. ComEd is on track to train about 1,100 workers this year at its new $8 million training center that opened in January in Rockford.

Chris Guimon, 50, who has spent 22 years splicing cable in manholes, is finishing a supervisor training class at the Rockford training center, a new class as of this year.

"It's been 19 weeks of applications and tests. I'm fried and burnt," Guimon said. "I've learned a ton: how to speak to people, how to get people to work, they teach you all that stuff, conflict in the workplace. Plus a lot of technical stuff. You name it, they put you through it."

Still, Guimon said he's trying to better understand the smartphone he was given about 1 1/2 months into his training.

The first time he was asked to cut in half a "perfectly good piece of cable" to make room for computer equipment went against what he was taught as a splicer.

"It's not broken," he said.

Cutting perfectly good cable to make way for the smart grid also doesn't sit well with some workers. Joints, where cables are joined, are signed, the worker's name indicating cables have been properly spliced.

Bill Sullivan, 54 a training manager at ComEd who spent 16 years in manholes, said it's difficult to undo someone else's good work. He said he once encountered the handiwork of his father and called him to let him know he wasn't severing the splice because it was broken, but because the grid was being modernized.